These Broken Wax Wings
by Copper None The Wiser
Summary: One shot: Walter Bishop loses the one thing he held above everything else. Overwhelmed by grief the sanity he had left begins to fray.


Author's Note: One, I do not own Fringe or any of the characters but damn do I wish I did. Two, this takes place at the end of The Man on the Other Side. It wouldn't let me sleep for two nights until I wrote and edited it. So here you go and hope you enjoy my little muse of madness and sap. This was edited to the music of True and Theme of Laura (Reprise)- Silent Hill 2.

By the way SPOILER WARNING for The Man on the Other Side. Just so you know.

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Agent Dunham hesitated after giving the news of Peter's sudden departure, unsure what to say next. The once great and brilliant scientist Doctor Walter Bishop stammered before her, his words nothing more than quiet murmurs. The phone she had tried in vain to call the younger Bishop with went back into her pocket, now useless. He tried to reach for it as if it were a life line, cringing when it fell out of sight.

Walter didn't want to believe it as Olivia sadly watched him. To him her gaze was accusing him of the inaction he had taken with telling his son the truth. Here he stood in his son's empty house with a trail of secrets left unsaid that had finally caught up to him. But he hardly could concentrate on Agent Dunham, his mind going back to the only one that had been truly important in his life.

Peter.

His son.

He suddenly felt so lost, like the time in Chinatown, in a land of noise and color that made no sense. But this time there would be no Peter to tell him not to wander off; there would be no wise cracks about his advanced radical science, and least of all no one to call him _dad_.

Walter shifted to and fro unsure where to go in a house that had once been so inviting and had suddenly become foreign. He gazed about unfocused, the hot tears welling up in clear blue eyes his son shared.

He tried to come up with a solution, a way to find Peter and make the man see reason. There had to be a way, maybe scientific to bring back the boy he loved so dearly he had risked the entire world for. Numbers came to mind, phone numbers, random equations, mathematic problems of streets, miles. Yet he could not complete them. Names that did not come with the phone numbers sprang up; faces with no names came to mind. It was all a great jumble of words and thought.

None of it was making any sense.

The harder he tried in vain to think of Peter the more and more his train of thought strayed. Until one voice rose above the warring notions in his brilliantly shattered mind. It was wicked and dark, somehow ugly in his head. And its words chilled him to the bone. _Peter is not your son,_it taunted, _it was never to be the happy ending you had wished for. Father and son to finally be a family, with all of your sins that you have wrought?_

The broken man didn't hear Olivia tell Astrid that she would have to call Walter later, having received an urgent call from the Bureau. He did not hear the worry in Olivia's voice, nor the door close behind the woman he'd one day hoped to call his daughter-in-law. All he could see was the day he brought his son home from that fateful night, the pride of doing what his better off self on the other side could not, and then the anger in what wasn't his actual son's eyes as he told Walter that he knew _everything_. And worst of all, Peter spat the word father and turned away from Walter.

The agony was worse than anything he could have remembered. Worse even than the first time his mind had snapped under the sheer velocity of his genius turning wisdom and intelligence into rambling madness. Than his child's death. He could almost feel the weight of his life buckling onto him, the mental walls crumbling from the loss of his only care in the world.

The second one he had called his son.

Walter cried out in pure anguish, knew vaguely that his knees had buckled, and could not stop the tears from coming. He didn't care to wipe them away. All he had ever worked for, his son, his job, his wife, his life was gone.

The voice returned again to taunt him, to repeat his horrors with critical detail that he attempted with his loosening sanity to stop. All the while pictures that he had seen years ago flashed before his eyes, loves that had come and gone, voices that reminded him of notes to research he could not recall poured into the recesses of the mental cracks. No! Walter screamed in the prison of his own mind, go away! _You should have listened to your wife. You should have left him in better hands the hands of the other side_. But he would have died again! I would have had to watch him die all over again. Old images of a man with wings came and went, an old tale he had once skimmed over in a library long forgotten and he cried out when the name came to him. Dear God, save me, I'm falling… god I'm falling.

"Walter."

Someone long ago. He must have heard her. What was her name?

"Walter."

It didn't matter. He should be left to his fate.

"Walter!" The voice he could not put a face to shouted, this time he was sure that it rang in his left ear. Did he even deserve this? Maybe he was going mad all over again. Another cry followed by a sob escaped his lips. That was when he felt it. He was caught in a strong grip that he couldn't shake. A straight jacket! He was in St. Clair's again being restrained. He fought, his effort weak, and wanted so badly to end it. It was cold. He didn't remember it being so cold.

He half expected to be lying on the floor with interns staring down at him. Yet the cold tile was only under his rear, he wasn't lying. There was no harsh glare from the insane asylum's light; instead Walter sat in the kitchen locked in a warm, tight hold. Slowly he came to sense the hum of a refrigerator echoed, the tick of a clock somewhere, and the kitchen appeared to him once more. Something cool fell onto his neck to slide under his shirt collar. The aroma of pomegranate and melon filled the air around him, giving him yet another anchor to focus on and pull him out of madness.

It was Astrid.

Hadn't she gone home? Didn't she leave with Olivia?

The sound of sniffling caught his attention. What was it for? Crying? He became acutely aware that her face was tucked to his neck, breath ragged from- she was crying. "Please Walter don't do this now." She urged, "We'll get him back."

Pain ran straight to the heart that felt too heavy to beat hurt when she said it. It wasn't possible to get Peter back, not this time. I should have told him. Walter could feel himself being drawn into the blackness of his own despair and found he could not do anything to pull himself away. He was drowning in the sea Daedalus, Icarus' father, had warned him about. Fly too close to the sun and you will fall into the great, dark waters.

Two long, thin, and pleasantly warm hands took him by the face, and forced his roaming eyes to see her and only her.

"Damn it Walter," Astrid tried again, this time her voice was hardened with determination, "Whatever happened can be fixed. It _will_ be fixed if you come out of there."

He didn't know if it would be that simple to just lift yourself above it all, cross over the nonsense that flowed like a fast river he thought he could not get by. Yet through all the clutter he let himself be led out of his mind by her.

And he did.

Now Walter finally _saw_ the worry clouding beautiful brown eyes that he couldn't see in his initial ascent, the frown marring her usually pretty features. Below the worried gaze he spotted tears of her own falling, and he touched his neck to find evidence of those tears. He wasn't sure what to say, if he should say anything at all.

When he finally asked just what she was crying for, she replied with glassy eyes "You had… begun to ramble. About what I don't know, I just couldn't get you to stop. The look on your face scared the hell out of me. It wasn't you Walter, you were somewhere else. You looked clear at me and didn't recognize me."

Astrid leaned in again, wrapping her arms around his neck. Of all the things he would, could expect from anyone it was a simple hug. In his ear she told him sadly, "I was afraid I'd lost you there."

"You remained here the entire time? How long… how long was I 'out' for?" He wasn't sure he truly wished to him.

Astrid told him ten minutes. She had watched the clock on the microwave.

He couldn't believe she had stayed. He could hardly look to others with mental disorders that reminded him of such horrible times in his life and this woman had forced herself to endure it. Absently he wondered just what she had seen, madness he knew and didn't need the haunted look in her eyes to tell him that. Shame reddened his face, and wished to be alone. But she would not let go.

"We'll get Peter back, we have to." She said.

"But," Walter stammered, finding it difficult to recover his voice when all he wished to do was say nothing at all, "But I… Astro I don't know where to… what to… do. I should have told him. There are so many things I meant to say and never could I find the courage to…"

The dread of voicing what he should have told Peter aloud choked him, and his sight grew watery. He felt Astrid gently guide his head to her shoulder as he sobbed. She rested her cheek against his steel grey hair to let him weep in peace, never once remarking about it. She stroked his back in a effort to comfort him. Walter thought he may never stop crying and if he did, the old broken pieces would come back to scatter the madness back into his skull. He clung to Astrid for dear life. Several more minutes passed.

Then he heard her say, "When we fall, we must get up again. Even if our wings are broken."

Coincidences rarely happened. Walter's eyes widened and he nearly jerked out of her hold to stare disbelieving at her. "What did you say?" His tone came out harsher than he wanted.

Yet the woman who kept the possibly soon-to-be crazier man within her arms, offering him a smile that made the pain in his chest subside. "It's sort of something my mother used to say. Now can we get off the floor? I think my legs fell asleep."

Walter glanced down at the gleaming white tiles, some of the seventy-eight of them, and quickly nodded in agreement. She helped him up and when he was on his own two feet again it felt like some of the weight he bore slid from his shoulders, although the burden of his wrongs lingered. Astrid gave his hand a squeeze, trying to lighten the mood.

"Hey stop your worrying. And don't say you aren't'." Astrid fixed him with a stare that left no room for arguments. "Peter is angry. He, like anyone else, probably wants time to think. And he can't elude the FBI forever, not with Olivia and I around. Besides he has a stubborn streak just like his father."

This time Walter had to step in, "Astrik, you know as well as I do that I was a horrible father and-"The woman held her hand up. He tried to wave it aside, to tell her that he wasn't worthy of being called such, that he didn't deserve anything when Astrid cupped his rough and lined face with one hand, wiping away the trail of tears.

Walter caught her free hand, studied it for a while, and then brought it close.

Quietly he asked, "Do you know the story of Icarus and his wax wings?" Astrid nodded, continuing his thoughts, "The man who wished to fly to the sun only the sun melted his wax wings and he fell back to earth. Some say it was the gods' punishment."

Walter's head bobbed up and down vigorously with the delighted smile he wore when they finally flowed his scientific know how, "Yes, yes, except it was a Greek tale of Daedalus and his son Icarus who were escaping exile from an island King Minos set them upon. Daedalus made wax wings for them both and warned Icarus not to fly too close to the sun and too close to the sea. But Icarus did so anyway, his wings melting and he drowned. I feel that way. Falling, losing, dying. What will I do without him Aztec?"

Astrid, the one who had been there since his release of the mental asylum, the one who had become his assistant, who could finish or even say full sentences with him, ran her thumb over the length of his cheekbone, eye alight. "Then we're going to have to rebuild your wings. But this time I won't let you fly too close to the sun. "

The older man clutched her hand to his heart, unsure he could trust his voice now. He didn't want to let go.

"Don't worry Walter. I'm not letting Peter run off without a fight. Who else has better computer skills than me? And don't say Peter, I could out run him in-" She paused when her cell phone rang.

She took that warm hand from his cheek leaving only cold in its wake. He almost reached for her other hand which she sunk into her pocket. She drew the small device, checking the name. They were so close she had no way to block him from seeing whatever it was. A text message as Peter had called them, something about a party or maybe it was position.

It was something that had never accrued to Walter. That Junior Agent Farnsworth had a life outside the Fringe Division. That there were other people he had never seen that she probably called friends, and found himself wondering just what she did when away from the lab. He had never asked. Of course he had never had time, never thought about it, and never had reason to. He usually was focused at the task at hand, keeping everything else at bay to his lovely if odd obsessions. Now it felt like no one belonged with him in any way.

He was sure this was his punishment for breaking the world.

The junior FBI agent jabbed a few buttons on the phone while shaking her head, and shoved it back into her coat. He still knew better. He began to shy away, wanting his eyes to see anything but her soon-to-be apology to leave, and said "Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. You should be out with your friends."

"Oh no you don't." Astrid took his arm and seemed to know just what direction he squirmed in to slip away. "I'm with a friend. And I'll worry about him all I want. Or would you prefer me not to care?" The last word hung in the air. Walter saw a compassion he'd never seen before in her, or maybe he just hadn't been paying attention for the time they had shared. Her smile chased away the madness he feared, and here she had proved that she was truly something rare in his life. A counter balance. She could keep up with his intelligence and wit, even helped him made the best damned root beer, milk shake, and pie he'd ever had. She was here to stay. Finally Walter gave a weak shake of his head.

"No, no," He murmured happily, wrapping both hands around her hand he had captured earlier. "I'm fine with you caring."

Astrid flashed a brilliant smile his way and tugged him towards the front door, not bothering with the coat closet since he was already dressed to leave. Snatching his keys off the side table by the door she said, "Good because you're not getting rid of me that easily Walter Bishop. Besides where are you going to find a better lab assistant that will enjoy half the crazy things you do. Come on, we have wings to rebuild. How about we run to the supermarket, then head to the lab to see if we can make some home-made licorice or something?"

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Sorry if the characters are a bit out of character.

P.S. To everyone who has commented or just like it for the noobish work it is. THANK YOU! *Flying tackle hugs you* Because you are awesome. That is all.

P.S.S. About three years later I finally wander back to Fanfiction to find a few more reviews. Again thank you to everyone who's read this and enjoy it.


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